Mendoza

The best view we saw of Pucon was out the back of the Cama bus as it pulled off for the overnight journey to Santiago. After a rather boring 2hrs in Santiago bus terminal at 7am we left for Mendoza. The drive straight over the top of the Andes was spectacular. The bus wound its way up and up via ridiculously tight chicane type bends for a good half hour until we reached the top of the pass. At which point we had to get out for border control,by God it was nippy standing in the queue for half an hour at that altitude. We arrived in the hostel to meet up with our newly made friends from Pudu in Bariloche as we had made it our business to be there for the scheduled "Bikes n Wines" tour the following day.
The following morning we made it to the start of the route, were given our bikes and maps and off we went. Our first stop was a big commercial winery called "La Rural" were we were given a tour of the place and detailed explanations as to how the wine is produced. All very interesting but we were there for one thing and one thing only! Finally, we got our first free glass of wine at midday and off we were to our next stop. We decided to cycle to the end of the route while we were fresh and make our way back from there. Turns out cycling 12km is harder than it sounds. When we finally got there we were treated to a lovely tiny winery and were given the special treatment as we (Shane,Louise,Zoe,Rosanna,Vicky & Marcus) were the only people there. We tasted 4/5 of their wines for the equivalent of 4euro. We decided to have lunch at the next stop as the day was flying by. As we waited for lunch we tasted another 4/5 wines (at that stage we told them we were fine for the tours,we´ll go straight for the tasting). Another 2 bottles between the 6 of us during lunch as the sun shone, things could have been a lot worse. By the time we left, there was only time for one more stop,the chocolate liquor factory. Guess whose favourite stop this was?! We tasted the gorgeous chocolate and liquors and finally had to call it a day. Great fun all round, despite the rather sore rears. Topped off by more ridiculously cheap supermarket wine in the hostel that night.
The next few days were spent chilling and doing very little, a number of these days due to serious hangovers, a bottle of cheap red wine each before heading out is not good for the head. Mendoza itself was a very nice spot, lovely small city centre with a lovely square and park. A fair few more steaks were had as our time in Argentina counted down. Hostel Lao was really class, up there with Pudu and America Del Sur in Bariloche and Calafate, met some great people there and the cable tv helped when hungover (even got to see a live Premiership game on the Sunday morn live on Fox Argentina!). In the end, we had spent 5 nights (2 more than planned) there so were ready to leave when the time came and head to our last Argentine destination, Salta.